Microsoft Word - ChristianityNotReligionBkMSS.doc

(primarily European and North American) religion that is
inextricably connected with Western civilization and an
abundance of cultural accretions. The liberalized moral
decadence of Western civilizations – viewed by many in
other cultures as “Christian civilization” – has, in fact,
fueled a backlash of repudiation against “Christianity” by
other religio-cultural societies. Reverting to a radical
conservatism of their own religio-cultural values, some
have regarded Western religious “Christianity” as the
“Great Satan” that threatens their established way of life
and religious worship. Islamic fundamentalism and its
proclaimed jihad against Western thought and religion is
the foremost contemporary example of this phenomenon.
In addition to the religio-cultural understanding of the
term “Christianity,” one has to add the semantic problem of
how the word is translated in other languages. French
sociologist, Jacques Ellul, notes, for example, in his book,
The Subversion of Christianity (English title), that the
French word for “Christianity” is christianisme (original
French title of his book, La Subversion du Christianisme).
In his denial that the reality of Christ is an ...ism (cf.
chapter 7 of this book), and without an adequate French
word to explain “Christianity” in a positive way, Ellul